As, However, We Have Hitherto Only Adverted To The Romans, In Our Account Of The Discoveries And Commerce Of The Carthaginians, It Will Be Proper To Notice Them In A Much More Detailed And Particular Manner.

We shall, therefore, trace, their geographical knowledge, their discoveries and their commerce, from the foundation of Rome, to the

Period of their conquest of Egypt; and in the course of this investigation, we shall give a sketch of the commerce of those countries which successively fell under their dominion - omitting such as we have already noticed: by this plan, we shall be enabled to trace the commerce of all the known world at that time, down to the period when Rome absorbed the whole.

The account which Polybius gives, that before the first Carthaginian war the Romans were entirely ignorant of, and inattentive to sea affairs - if by this statement he means to assert that they were unacquainted with maritime commerce, as well as maritime warfare, is expressly contradicted by the treaties between Rome and Carthage, which we have already given in our account of the commerce of Carthage. The first of those treaties was made 250 years before the first Punic war; and the second, about fifty years before it. Besides, it is not probable that the Romans should have been entirely ignorant of, and inattentive to maritime commerce for so long a period; since several nations of Italy, with which they were at first connected, and which they afterwards conquered, were very conversant in this commerce, and derived great consideration, power, and wealth from it.

The Romans had conquered Etruria, and made themselves masters of the Tuscan powers both by sea and land, before the commencement of the first Punic war; and though at this period, the Tuscans were not so celebrated for their commerce as they had been, yet the shipping and commerce they did possess, must have fallen into the power of the Romans; and we can scarcely suppose that these, together with the facilities which the Tuscans enjoyed for commerce, by means of their ports, and their skill and commercial habits and connections, would be entirely neglected by their conquerors. Besides, there are several old Roman coins, by some supposed to have been as old as the time of the kings, and certainly prior to the first Punic war, on the reverses of which different parts of ships are visible. Now, as the Roman historians are diffuse in the accounts they give of the wars of the Romans, but take no notice of their commercial transactions, we may safely conclude, from their not mentioning any maritime wars, or expeditions of a date so early as these coins, that the ships at that period preserved by the Romans, and deemed of such consequence as to be struck on their coins, were employed for the purposes of commerce.

The Tuscans and the Grecian colonies in the south of Italy, certainly had made great progress in commerce at an early period; and as, - if their example did not stimulate the Romans to enterprises of the same kind, - the Romans, at least when they conquered them, became possessed of the commerce which they then enjoyed, it will be proper to take a brief view of it.

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